Counterproductive and organizational citizen behavior in the workplace

¶ … Workplace Deviance

Counterproductive and Productive Behaviors

Defining Counterproductive and Productive Work Behavior

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is defined by an employee's actions causing harm to either a coworker or their employer (reviewed by Krischer, Penney, and Hunter, 2010). The forms of CWB can vary considerably, from arguing with or ignoring coworkers, damaging equipment to sabotage the work of others, and reducing the amount of time spent at work. Researchers have proposed a number of theories that attempt to explain the psychological roots of CWB and these include an employee reacting emotionally to a perceived negative workplace event or condition, or simply seeking a desired outcome (manipulation).

Krischer, Penney, and Hunter (2010) argue that organizational psychology research has focused almost exclusively on an employee's affective response to negative events, to the exclusion of internal or instrumental motivations. Instrumental motivations for engaging in CWB could arise from an employee's attempts to cope with a stressful situation at work, by something as simple as minimizing the amount of time spent at work.

The theoretical polar opposite of CWB is voluntary cooperative behavior above and beyond what's normally required by an employee-employer contract (reviewed by Koster and Sanders, 2006). A common term used to describe this type of behavior is organizational citizen behavior (OCB). The outcome of such behavior has an overall positive effect on the organization and character traits such as altruism and conscientiousness have been proposed as the primary motivations (reviewed in Vigoda-Gadot, 2006).

Rather than OCB arising solely out of personal ethics, Koster and Sanders (2006) argued that an OCB employee may expect reciprocity from others within the organization, whether from supervisors or coworkers. The interpersonal structure thus created between an OCB employee and other members of the organization has been termed organizational solidarity (Koster and Sanders, 2006). In contrast to the reciprocity theory of OCB, or in combination with it, Vigoda-Gadot (2006) argued that OCB can arise out of workplace pressures and expectations that can cross the line into abusive and coercive management styles, which drive the employee to go beyond what is required. In these situations OCB would be compulsory, rather than voluntary. Together, these theories suggest that the psychological factors precipitating OCB may be just as complex as those for CWB.

The Cost of CWB

CWB behaviors, like theft, fraud, vandalism, sabotage, or absenteeism are common, with between 33 and 75% of all employees having engaged in such behaviors (reviewed by Bennett and Robinson, 2000). Drug use is prevalent, sexual harassment was experienced by 42% of the women surveyed, and 7% of employees reported being threatened with physical harm. The annual cost of CWB to organizations may be as high as 200 billion dollars.

Interventions

The general approach to minimizing CWB prevalence is to maximize the cost of engaging in such behavior and minimizing its benefits (reviewed by Fodchuk, 2007). Promoting OCB would entail the opposite. On an organizational level the first step would be screening prospective employees during the hiring process for desired personality traits. The second step would be to perform an assessment of employee's perceptions regarding the fairness of procedures, distributions (salary, bonuses, etc.…), and interpersonal interactions. The best studied and most significant predictor of CWB is low organizational justice, and therefore any intervention designed to reduce CWB needs to evaluate the organizations strength in dealing fairly with its employees. Interventions to increase organizational justice would include remedial fairness training for managers. Work position design could also be contributing to CWB if there is little autonomy, underutilization of skill sets, task irrelevance, and minimal interaction with supervisors and coworkers. On an individual level outside stressors could be a contributing factor and organizations have implemented family-friendly programs like flex-time, job sharing, cyber commuting, and personal days, in an effort to assist employees to better manage their lives.